I attempt to write with humour and sensitivity about barbaric and cruel reality.

Background
Information

There's a saying when one door closes a window opens-- it was like that for me. When the newspaper where I'd worked for ten years went into receivership, I turned my back on the city, and headed off to the outback as a governess. It sounds like the start of a romantic novel, doesn't it? Sorry! Unlike a Victorian heroine, I didn't find romance, but I did discover the setting for my sci-fi novel, The Biocide Conspiracy.

Minilya the sheep and cattle station where I tutored three young girls is close to the Carnarvon Tracking Station built by NASA in 1963 for the Gemini Program. Wheels turned. Curling up on the couch I began telling my pupils a story about the International Space Station breaking up and the debris falling on the station. It was thus that my writing career was born.

SALVATION JANE is a change of genre for me. I never thought I'd write a political thriller about Australian politics. It may seem presumptuous but I actually set out to make a statement about contemporary Australian values and the disappearance of Australians' most likeable quality-- generosity of spirit.
Today in Australia there are people working hard, sometimes at several jobs, often long past retirement age, making little money who can no longer afford even the most basic housing. People with minimal education and abilities have always been part of the economic landcape, the difference is that previously even on the minimum wage they could afford to put a roof over their heads.
On the whole there hasn't been much reaction from those doing it easy. As long as the economic situation isn't affecting them personally and they can still pay the mortgage on a massive house, deliver their kids to their private school in a big 4WD before spending the rest of the day at the gym or the beauty spa, they don't spare a thought for pensioners going to bed in coats because the power has been turned off and single mothers with young children living in cars.
From middle class-oblivion to political insignificance-- while I was thinking about poverty it struck me that disadvantaged people should be politically active--it's the best defence against a government intent on balancing the budget at their expense. Anyone can start up a political party. Jane Patterson's anti-poverty party (APP) is an example of what can be achieved when people unite.